Promised

He nods at the maître d’, a signal that he’ll take it from here, then rounds the table and pulls my chair out for me. ‘Please.’ He swoops his hand towards the seat.

‘Thank you.’ I sit and place my bag on the table, almost relaxed until Miller lays his hand on my shoulder and pushes his mouth to my ear.

‘You look unimaginably beautiful.’ He pulls my hair to the side and skims his lips across the tender hollow below my ear. He can’t see me, so it doesn’t matter that I close my eyes, but my neck tilting to give him space is a dead giveaway of what he does to me. ‘Exquisite,’ he murmurs, sending a wave of tingles down my spine.

Relieving me of his touch, he appears in front of me again, unbuttoning his jacket and taking his seat. He glances down at his expensive watch and raises his eyebrows, silently observing my lateness.

‘I’ve taken the liberty of ordering for us.’

I match his raised brow. ‘You were obviously confident that I would be here.’

‘You are, aren’t you?’ He collects a bottle of white wine from the floor-standing wine bucket that’s positioned next to the table and starts to pour. The glasses are smaller than the red ones that we used yesterday, and I’m wondering how Miller will cope with the placing of things on the restaurant table. Nothing is positioned as it would be at home, but he doesn’t seem too bothered by it. He’s not twitchy, and weirdly that is making me very twitchy. I almost want to put the wine on the table where it belongs.

Pulling my wandering mind back to the man sitting opposite me, I observe his cool persona for a few moments, then I speak. ‘Why did you ask me to come?’

He lifts his glass and swirls the wine slowly before taking it to those devastating lips and drinking slowly, all the time ensuring his eyes never stray from mine. He knows what he’s doing. ‘I don’t recall asking you to come.’

For a split second, I nearly lose my composure. ‘You don’t want me here?’ I ask cockily.

‘As I recall, I sent you a message telling you that I would be here at eight. I also expressed my desire for something. I didn’t demand it.’ He takes another slow sip. ‘But by you being here, I’m assuming you would like to give me what I desire.’

His arrogance has returned full force. It spikes my own sass, and I know Miller is now wary of my sass. He likes his sweet girl. I reach into my purse and gather the cash I’ve loaded myself with. Then I toss it on the plate in front of him and relax back in my chair, all brash and calm. ‘I’d like to be entertained for four hours.’

His wine glass is floating between his mouth and the table as he stares down at the pile of money, which I’ve diabolically used my savings account to obtain; the savings account which contains every penny that my mother left me, the savings account which I have never dipped into out of principle. How ironic that I’m now using some of the money to have myself . . . entertained. I’ve drawn a reaction, just like I planned, and the words he once said are dancing at the front of my mind, egging me on. Promise me you won’t ever degrade yourself like that again. Me? What about him?

He’s speechless. His eyes are fixed on the money, and I can definitely see his suspended hand begin to shake, the wine rippling as evidence. ‘What’s this?’ he asks tightly, settling his glass down. I’m not shocked when I see him reposition the glass before he raises incensed blues to me.

‘A thousand,’ I reply, completely unruffled by his obvious anger. ‘I know the notorious Miller Hart demands more, but as we’re brokering a deal on just four hours and you know what you’re getting, I figured a thousand was fair.’ I take my glass and sip lazily, making an exaggerated display of swallowing and licking my lips. His blue eyes are wider than usual. His shock probably wouldn’t be noticeable to anyone else, but I know those eyes, and I know that most of his emotion comes from them.

He breathes in deeply and slowly scrapes the money from his plate, tidying it into a neat pile before reaching for my bag and stuffing it back inside. ‘Don’t insult me, Olivia.’

‘You’re insulted?’ I actually laugh. ‘How much money have you made from giving yourself to those women?’

He leans forward, his jaw ticking. Oh, I’m drawing emotion all right. ‘Enough to buy an exclusive club,’ he says coldly, ‘and I don’t give myself to those women, Olivia. I give them my body, nothing else.’

I wince, and I know he catches it, but listening to him speaking like that is turning my stomach. ‘You hardly give me anything else, either,’ I state unfairly. He absolutely has given me something other than his body, and his barely noticeable recoil tells me he knows it, too. He’s hurt by my claim. ‘Buy yourself a new tie.’ I take the money out and throw it on his side of the table, shocked by my own harshness, but his reactions are egging me on, feeding my unreasonable need to prove something, even though I’m not entirely sure what the purpose of my coldness is achieving. I can’t stop, though. I’m on autopilot.

The hollows of his cheeks begin to pulse. ‘And how was it different when you did it?’ He grinds the question out.

I try to conceal my choked breath. ‘I put myself in that world for a reason,’ I seethe. ‘I didn’t relish in the extravagance. I didn’t make a living from selling myself.’

His mouth snaps shut and he lets his eyes fall to the table briefly before he stands and buttons his jacket. ‘What’s happened to you?’